The runout groove: what the etchings mean

The short version: The smooth band between the last song and the label is called the dead wax or runout, and it carries the record's paperwork: a matrix number for each side, cut numbers, stamper codes, plant marks and often the initials of the engineer who cut it.¹⁰⁰ Read the right way, those scratches can tell you which factory pressed your copy and which lacquer it came from, but no single mark proves a first pressing on its own.¹⁰⁰¹⁰¹ And every so often there is a joke in there too.¹⁰²

What is the dead wax, and why is anything written there?#

The matrix number is a code, letters and numbers and sometimes symbols, stamped or handwritten in the runout groove area, which also goes by dead wax, end-groove area or matrix area.¹⁰⁰ It exists for the factory: per Wikipedia, its main job is to file the stamper and make sure each side gets the right label, and collectors borrowed it later to tell editions apart.¹⁰⁰ Around that core number you can find a cut or take number, plant codes or logos, the cutting engineer's initials or signature, and sometimes dates.¹⁰⁰

Do not confuse it with the catalog number, the bigger number that is usually the same on both labels. Matrix numbers differ side to side, and some labels print them upside down to avoid exactly that confusion.¹⁰⁰

There is a geography to it. One UK guide puts the lacquer number normally at 6 o'clock, with matrix and stamper information 90 degrees away at 9, 12 or 3 o'clock.¹⁰³ The same guide gives a useful tactile tip: stamper codes are embossed, standing proud of the surface, while lacquer and mother codes are carved in.¹⁰³ A researcher of one jazz label's runouts adds that the style of the stamps tracks the plating plant and era, not the cutting room.¹⁰⁴

The habit is old. Before about 1950, records were cut direct to disc and take numbers were inscribed in the matrix area; on Victor records the take number sits at "9 o'clock".¹⁰⁰ In the 1950s, one engineer recalls, every cutter at Fine Sound had a personal "maker's mark" that he inscribed, and dedicated mastering houses later stamped their own imprints.¹⁰⁵

What do A1, B1, -1A and RE actually mean?#

The number after the dash is usually the cut. Per Wikipedia, a suffix such as 12345-3 marks the third cut of that side, and an album numbered X-1234 might carry X-1234-B7 in the runout, the 7 being the cut number.¹⁰⁰ Records get recut for ordinary reasons: stampers wear out or get damaged, a test pressing is rejected, a fault turns up in the banding, another plant or country cuts its own masters, or a reissue gets a new number.¹⁰⁰ Sometimes the old cut is reused with the new number added and the old one scratched out.¹⁰⁰

Vinyl Me, Please says a "-1A" suffix "typically" indicates a first pressing of side A, and "RE" a repressing.¹⁰⁶ A UK shop blog lists "A1 B1" (also written A//1 B//1 or A-1 B-1) as a common first-press code.¹⁰⁷ Both are good starting points. Neither is a rule, and the best evidence for that comes from inside a major label.

A former Columbia cutting engineer, Phil Brown, told AnalogPlanet that an initial lacquer order was six sets: 1A and 1B went to the Pitman plant, 1C and 1D to Terre Haute, 1E and 1F to Santa Maria.¹⁰¹ All six are first cuttings, the article concludes, so the common belief that A came first, B second and C third is wrong.¹⁰¹ Another source quoted there says each plant got two sets because lacquers could be lost in plating; Brown says a change of program moved the number to -2, then -3; and the author suggests that if the first lacquer was ruined, the next cut could be 2A and be treated as the first.¹⁰¹

Wikipedia adds two more cautions: a cut 1 may have been rejected, and reissues often restart at 1.¹⁰⁰ A "-RE" suffix also does not necessarily mean the non-RE version was ever sold to the public.¹⁰⁰ Letters can mean people, too. In a lacquer number such as "AM 438-1", a letter suffix like -1R can identify the mastering engineer at that firm.¹⁰³

How do stamper codes like GRAMOPHLTD and BUCKINGHAM work?#

Two big British companies hid their stamper counts in words. At Decca the code word was BUCKINGHAM: B=1, U=2, C=3, K=4, I=5, N=6, G=7, H=8, A=9, M=0, so "NN" means the 66th stamper.¹⁰³ EMI's Hayes plant used GRAMOPHLTD: G=1, R=2, A=3, M=4, O=5, P=6, H=7, L=8, T=9, D=0, so "GG" is the 11th stamper.¹⁰³ A low stamper code means your copy came off early metal, which is as close to "early copy" as the dead wax gets.

Collector Zappa Frenzy's plant table maps the EMI layout: mother number at 9 o'clock, the stamper G-code at 3 o'clock, and a pre-1981 example string "EMI 5499 A-1-1-1-4".¹⁰⁸ The Gramophone Co. used the same system with a tax code, "KT", at 12 o'clock.¹⁰⁸ CBS at Aston Clinton in the UK put the matrix at 12, the stamper at 3 and the mother letter at 9.¹⁰⁸

On EMI records a UK shop blog reads YEX and YAX prefixes as usually stereo and XEX as usually mono, and "1Y//1 2Y//1" as often an early pressing.¹⁰⁷

Who signed my record?#

The most famous name in the dead wax belongs to George Peckham, who started cutting at Apple in London in 1968 and signed his work "Porky" or "A Porky Prime Cut".¹⁰² He also used "Pecko Duck", "Delta Pork" and similar variations.¹⁰² His notes were often funny or cryptic, nodding to the artist or the lyrics, sometimes with a small drawing; Sound & Vision compares the habit to programmers leaving notes in source code.¹⁰² Wikipedia credits him with many hidden runout messages and says he may have cut hundreds of thousands of records, mostly UK pressings.¹⁰⁰

In the US the marks are usually initials. Collectors and guides read RL as Robert (Bob) Ludwig, BG as Bernie Grundman and KG as Kevin Gray.¹⁰⁶¹⁰⁹ RVG marks classic jazz cuts by Rudy Van Gelder.¹¹⁰¹⁰⁹ At Masterdisk, HW is Howie Weinberg and GK Gilbert Kong; LH is Lee Hulko and TJ Ted Jensen, both at Sterling Sound.¹¹¹ Wally is Wally Traugott at Capitol.¹¹⁰¹¹¹

Some are pictures. One collector's list reads bird wings, sometimes replaced by a small flower, as Brian Gardner at Allen Zentz Mastering, and "eyebrows" as David Turner.¹¹⁰ A cent sign is Tom Coyne, a pun on his name.¹¹² In the UK, HTM is Harry T. Moss at EMI and Abbey Road, found on records including Revolver and The Dark Side of the Moon.¹¹²

Initials collide, so read them in context. One collector first listed "GP" as Peckham, then adopted a reader's correction that "AT/GP" is George Piros at Atlantic Studios in New York.¹¹⁰ On the ARSC mailing list, an engineer explains that Piros wrote P plus a number, the number naming a specific lathe and cutter-head combination, and another member recalls P13 and P17.¹⁰⁵¹¹³ And "RE" can be a repress marker or a set of initials, as for Rick Essig at Frankford/Wayne.¹⁰⁶¹¹⁴

What do STERLING, IAM and the other plant marks mean?#

Mastering houses often stamped their names. STERLING, stamped or etched, is Sterling Sound in New York.¹⁰⁶ A "Mastered by MasterDisc" stamp marks Masterdisk.¹⁰⁵ TOWNHOUSE and STRAWBERRY are London rooms.¹¹² Artisan Sound Recorders in Los Angeles used a logo that sources describe differently: Vinyl Me, Please describes a drum with two drumsticks, while one collector blog describes a drafting compass on a record, the compass forming an "A".¹⁰⁶¹¹⁰

Pressing plants used letters and symbols. On Capitol records, IAM in a triangle points to the Scranton, Pennsylvania plant, roughly 1963 to 1973; IAM is the International Association of Machinists, the union.¹⁰⁶¹¹⁰ A rifle- or arrow-like mark is Capitol's Winchester, Virginia plant, and a five- or six-point star is Capitol Los Angeles.¹⁰⁸ Columbia's three US plants show up as P (Pitman, New Jersey), T (Terre Haute, Indiana) and S (Santa Maria, California), with variants.¹⁰⁸¹⁰¹ RCA used a stamped H, I or R for Hollywood, Indianapolis and Rockaway.¹¹⁵ MR in a circle marks Monarch in Los Angeles.¹¹⁰¹⁰⁸

Not every symbol is a signature. A triangle followed by five digits, the delta number, is a job code used by Monarch and other plants, so it does not prove Monarch by itself.¹¹⁶¹⁰⁸ Allied Record Company is listed as "K-###" by one source and as a Q-shaped stamp by another.¹⁰⁸¹¹⁰ The decoder lists more than 100 of these marks, and flags where sources disagree.

How do European plants mark their records?#

European plants have their own dialects. Per Zappa Frenzy's table, Optimal Media in Röbel, Germany, uses an inverted 1 and a downward triangle; Pallas in Diepholz puts four or five digits between hyphens; Sonopress in Gütersloh pairs a three-digit date with an F-number, so "107 F-2654" means July 1991.¹⁰⁸ CBS in Haarlem, the Netherlands, used strings like "OI_7261_IA_I" from 1977 to 1987, and Ljudpress in Östersund, Sweden, etched LP, sometimes with a date.¹⁰⁸ In the UK, a six-point asterisk is Audio Services in Wednesbury.¹⁰⁸ Vinyl Me, Please reads "P USA" as Pallas pressing for US export.¹⁰⁶

What does DMM mean in the dead wax?#

DMM, Direct Metal Mastering, means the record was cut straight into a copper-plated master rather than a lacquer.⁵⁴ Per Wikipedia, Teldec and Georg Neumann GmbH developed it, Neumann building the cutters into its VMS80 lathe series, and the idea came from RCA's late-1970s videodisc work.⁵⁴ The payoff is in the factory: one electroplating stage to make stampers instead of three for lacquer, and in the early 1980s many copies could be pressed from one master without wear-driven recuts.⁵⁴¹⁰⁰ You will see "DMM" on the sleeve or inscribed in the lead-out area.⁵⁴

The sound is argued about. Wikipedia notes that some listeners describe DMM pressings as harsh or forward in the treble.⁵⁴

Wikipedia also says only about 30 DMM lathes were made, about 10 were converted to lacquer, and as of 2009 seven publicly usable DMM rooms remained, in Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic; it says the US lost its last in 2005.⁵⁴ Masterdisk's community-written Discogs profile, however, says the studio began DMM cutting in February 1986 and lists DMM cutting among its services.¹¹⁷ Those two cannot both describe the present, and we have not resolved which is current.

What are the famous runout messages?#

Per Wikipedia, some copies of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" single carry "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law", believed to have been requested by the band.¹⁰⁰ U2's Rattle and Hum (1988) reads "We Love You A.L.K.", for production manager Anne Louise Kelly.¹⁰⁰ Elvis Costello's This Year's Model in the UK (1978) had a contest message with a phone number, and Emitt Rhodes' self-titled album says "Recorded at Home" in ornate lettering.¹⁰⁰ The practice survived the format change: most US CDs of Happy Mondays' Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches say "CALL THE COPS".¹⁰⁰

Vinyl Me, Please points to "Goodbye Waterface" on Neil Young's Tonight's the Night, and notes that Third Man Records puts messages on every release.¹⁰⁶

How do I use all this to identify my pressing?#

1. Copy the runout exactly. Discogs asks contributors to enter it verbatim, one string per side, keeping capitalization, single spaces for gaps and strikethrough for crossed-out text.¹¹⁸ Then search Discogs by the full string.¹⁰⁹
2. Sort raised from carved. Embossed codes come from the stamper; carved ones from the lacquer or mother.¹⁰³
3. Find the plant. A letter or logo usually does it. If there is none, one collector measures the pressing ring on the label, which differs by plant: about 70mm at Specialty, 36mm at Capitol Winchester, a double 35/72mm at Monarch.¹¹⁰
4. Look for the lowest cut and stamper numbers. A shop guide suggests the lowest indicators, such as -A, -1 or -1S, as a sign of earlier copies.¹⁰⁹ Keep the Columbia caveat in mind: 1A to 1F were all first cuttings sent to different plants.¹⁰¹
5. Check the paper too. Label designs date a pressing; a collector cites the Warner Bros. green label of about 1970 to 1973, followed by the "Burbank" palm-tree label of 1973 to 1978.¹¹⁰ A barcode on a 1965 title means a reissue, since barcodes were not widely used before the late 1970s.¹⁰⁹
6. Cross-check. Discogs has errors, so one collector checks forums and specialist sites as well.¹¹⁰

On CDs the same instinct applies with different codes. Discogs separates the L-prefixed mastering SID, added at glass mastering, from the IFPI mould SID added at pressing, and notes that an "LC" code is a label code, not a matrix or catalog number.¹¹⁸